She had no choice but to pay it, and in doing so wiped out her entire measly savings in one go.Īnd so, her Friday night plans had been reduced from dinner at Indochine with her Tisch friends to attending this complimentary sex positive meet-up with her slightly unhinged roommate. Going to her parents would require telling them that she’d had the seizure in the first place. Since their wedding, Frank had made it clear that the Brother Bank was officially closed. Her options for getting funds fast were limited. She had health insurance (paid for by Frank, of course), but that only brought the remaining payment down to just over a thousand dollars. Within it she found outlined in clinical detail the substantial costs of the brain scan she’d had at the hospital with her brother Frank and his new wife Cleo. She’d opened the envelope from Beth Israel carelessly enough, not anticipating that it contained the financial equivalent of a dick slap. Best of all, she was paid under the table in cash, which meant she had even been managing to save a tiny bit of money for the first time in her life.īut then she got the medical bill. Despite this robust marketing plan, the store was often empty for hours at a time and, since it remained closed between her shifts, Zoe decided that she was free to borrow the clothes with impunity, as long as she was careful not to spill on them, a plan which nipped her own nascent shopping habit in the bud. Zoe had been instructed to sit in the window and look pretty to attract foot traffic, which suited her inner exhibitionist well. The clothing sold there catered to the tastes of a particular type of West Village woman, one both wealthy and vaguely bohemian, who worked as…Well, Zoe wasn’t quite sure, but in some career path that meant she was free to shop during the weekday. It was a tiny velvet box of a store, owned by a stylist with family money and a fairly obvious drug problem whom Zoe had lent a tampon to at an after-party (she’d used the applicator as a coke straw). Until that week, she had been making ends meet on her income as the sole employee of a women’s boutique on Christopher Street. She had agreed solely because the class was free, which meant it was the only thing she could afford to do that night.

Zoe had been persuaded to come by her roommate, Tali, who had hair the color of Windex spray and said things like your pussy is your power. The Climaxing to Consciousness group met every Friday in a hot yoga studio on Canal Street above a store advertising ten-dollar aura readings. Photo-Illustration: The Cut Photos: Getty

Frankenstein and cleopatra